On Thursday, February 22, 2024, many cell phone users in the United States experienced service disruptions and outages.
Some of the major carriers affected were AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, which reported tens of thousands of issues on their networks. Some police departments also stopped receiving 911 calls during the outage.
The cause of the outage is still unclear, but some experts have suggested that it might be related to two powerful solar flares that erupted from the sun on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. Solar flares are bursts of electromagnetic radiation that can interfere with radio signals and satellite communications on Earth.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the solar flares were classified as X1.8 and X1.7, which are among the strongest types of flares. The flares originated from a sunspot named AR3590, which has a complex and volatile magnetic field that makes it prone to eruptions.
NOAA issued an alert for a solar radio emission on Thursday morning, which indicated a possible coronal mass ejection (CME) or solar radiation storm. A CME is a large cloud of charged particles that can cause geomagnetic storms and auroras when it hits Earth’s magnetic field.
However, NOAA also stated that it is highly unlikely that the solar flares contributed to the cell phone outages, and that the outage appears to be a coincidence not connected to the space weather events. The agency also said that most of the material ejected by the flares is expected to miss Earth, but a glancing influence might be possible on February 25.
The cell phone outage has sparked various theories and speculations on social media, ranging from Russian nukes to aliens to Netflix. Some users joked that the outage was a marketing stunt for the Netflix film “Don’t Look Up”, which depicts a scenario where a comet threatens to destroy Earth and causes a global tech blackout.
The cell phone carriers have not yet provided an official explanation for the outage, but some have said that they are working to restore service as soon as possible.
By Salam Bustanji
